Parents: school used webcam to spy on our kid at home

If it's a school-issued laptop, does the school have the right to spy on kids …

School-issued laptops are becoming more and more common these days, but thanks to the action of one high school, students and parents might have second thoughts about bringing them home. The parents of a Pennsylvania high school student, Blake J. Robbins, have filed a lawsuit against his school district after discovering that school officials had allegedly been remotely accessing the laptop in order to take webcam photos of the students at home (via BoingBoing). There are a number of unanswered questions about this story, but if true, it could mean serious penalties for the Lower Merion School District.

According to the complaint, the school in question (Harriton High School) had issued laptops equipped with built-in webcams to every student so that they could have "24/7 access to school based resources" and the ability to work seamlessly between school and home when it comes to research and projects. In November of 2009, however, Robbins was disciplined by the Assistant Principal of his school, Lindy Matsko, for engaging in "improper behavior" in his home. At that time, Matsko cited a photograph from the built-in webcam on the laptop.

Robbins' father Michael supposedly confirmed with Matsko that the school has the ability to remotely activate the webcam "at any time it chose to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam." Needless to say, Robbins' parents were outraged at this development, as neither the school nor the district had told parents about this capability. As a result, the Robbins have filed a class-action lawsuit against the district, charging it with interception of electronic communications under the ECPA, theft of intellectual property under the CFAA, violations of the Stored Communications Act, violations of the Civil Rights Act, invasions of privacy, and violations of the Pennsylvania wiretapping and electronic surveillance act.

Ars tried to get clarification from Harriton High School about its laptop policy, but were told that no one at the school would be willing to discuss it with us. (Merion School District has not responded to our request for comment either.) As such, we're left speculating as to what else could have happened to led up to this seemingly surreal series of events.

It's possible that things may have played out differently than the complaint alleges, though. If it was a MacBook, for example, Blake may have used the built-in Photo Booth software to take a picture of himself doing something questionable while at home, which may or may not be against the school's policy. If that photo got posted online or even synced back with the school's admins the next day, it's possible that Matsko was given access to the photo for disciplinary purposes. This, of course, doesn't account for the claim that Matsko confirmed with Michael Robbins that the school could (and had) spied on Blake remotely, but we haven't heard the school's side of the story yet.

If the Robbins' allegations are true, then it certainly looks as if there were serious privacy violations at hand. The school may have the right to retain admin control over its own laptops, but spying on kids at home without their knowledge is likely not one of them. This is similar to a case from 2008 when a Florida woman took her laptop in for repairs and eventually discovered it was rigged up to take webcam photos of her at home without her knowledge. The Peeping Tom in that case ended up confessing to the deed and getting arrested, but things could get far more complicated if a government entity (in this case, a public school) was the one guilty of the peeping.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

152 Reader Comments

It is all true then yes the families should sue the hell out of everyone involved. What the hell was the school district thinking? I hope they get reamed over this. Someone should also go to prison over this too. This is just crazy.

Originally posted by wapacz:Am I reading this right. The person was in the vice principles home?

No. They were allegedly taking pictures of the students while they were at home via the built in web cams of the school owned lap tops.

quote:

Originally posted by Fritz Gerlich:didn't they know some of the pics could be considered Child Pr0n. WTF were they thinking.

Man, that is a great point. What if one of the teens/kids had been undressing in front of the web cams? Damn, then it would turn Federal, right? My guess is that everyone involved is screwed in the rear.

Surreal... what kind of moron would think that sort of action is appropriate?And what the hell is a school doing defining inappropriate behavior at home? It's frightening how far they can extend their reach over students' private lives already - surely it cannot extent to private behavior within one's own four walls.

Originally posted by wapacz:Am I reading this right. The person was in the vice principles home?

Well, the sentence in the article was poorly constructed so that the nearest antecedent that could match "his" in "his home" is "the Assistant Principal of his school, Lindy Matsko" --- but I think the author did mean "in [Robbins's] home."

I used to work in a lab at Caltech which had SGI machines with early webcams which were actually streamed live all the time. But, at least it was easy to close a plastic shutter on the front of the cameras if we wanted to turn them off temporarily.

The built-in cameras on many home computers have greater potential for privacy violations. There is usually a little green light that lets you know the camera is on, but aside from actually covering the camera with tape there often isn't a way to mechanically disable it.

Given that laptops may often be used in student's bedrooms I would hope the school would have a zero tolerance policy for employees who accessed the cameras on those laptops remotely. Even without doing anything wrong with the computer, school officials should not be spying on students undressing in their bedrooms.

However, as you say in the article, if the students are taking naughty photos with the computer then that is surely violating the code of conduct one would expect.

Originally posted by wapacz:Am I reading this right. The person was in the vice principles home?

No. They were allegedly taking pictures of the students while they were at home via the built in web cams of the school owned lap tops.

quote:

Originally posted by Fritz Gerlich:didn't they know some of the pics could be considered Child Pr0n. WTF were they thinking.

Man, that is a great point. What if one of the teens/kids had been undressing in front of the web cams? Damn, then it would turn Federal, right? My guess is that everyone involved is screwed in the rear.

Just undressing? I've always had my computer and/or laptop on my desk which generally had a view of my bed. Actual pr0n might have been made had my school been taking pictures.

Originally posted by TheAce-MGT:Just undressing? I've always had my computer and/or laptop on my desk which generally had a view of my bed. Actual pr0n might have been made had my school been taking pictures.

Well, I was not going there personally, but I guess the same can be said for me too. It all amounts to the same charge in the end though legally I do believe.

I can't help but echo the surreal comment made above. This is insane. Saying heads need to roll is an understatement. If they were remotely turning on the webcams on student laptops then there is a very long list of people who need to be fired including IT staff, school administrators, as well as administrators at the county level.

I'm reserving judgment because I find it hard to believe anyone at the school would be so stupid. If it is true, people need to be fired quickly. Also, I know that there would be a monetary award involved, but when a public school is the culprit, and I'm just being selfish here, this only hurts the taxpayers. People need to be fired or put in jail, but a monetary award just harms society. This isn't just some evil corporation losing profits. Am I way off here?

I would like to think that nobody who is in charge of managing laptops would think it is "ok" to remotely turn on webcams, especially of students.

I would like to think that it was just a student doing inappropriate things with the laptop webcam and then the aforementioned pictures ended up back on the school network when he took it back to school.

Until I hear evidence to the contrary, I am going to err on the side of the educational institute. Kids do stupid crap with their webcams, and a school issued laptop is not the place to be doing that crap. i.e. don't put nudie pics of yourself on a school/work laptop.

As a recent graduate of Harriton, I thought I could shed some light on the situation. These laptops were 2.0ghz 2gb Macbooks issued out to all the students for the entire year to do whatever they wanted and this was the 2nd year of the program. The webcam couldn't be disabled due through tough tough security settings. Occasionally we would notice that the green light was on from time to time but we just figured that it was glitching out as some macbooks do sometimes. Some few covered it up with tape and post its because they thought the IT guys were watching them. I always thought they were crazy and that the district, one of the more respectable ones within the state, would never pull some ***** like this. I guess I was wrong. I am a little surprised because nobody in the past had be disciplined for doing anything inappropriate during school or outside of school. The only thing coming close was a kid performing a simple hack to make another account in order to install games. This specific incident was traced through the network by the IT dept. While I still think there might be a chance the vice principal/ disciplinarian doesn't have these specific images as she is quite the type to make a bluff like that, it sounds to me like this is legit. If they have been watching all of us and looking at our logs and looking at what we type, I can assure you that they have seen lots and lots and lots of dirty things.

his is similar to a case from 2008 when a Florida woman took her laptop in for repairs and eventually discovered it was rigged up to take webcam photos of her at home without her knowledge. The Peeping Tom in that case ended up confessing to the deed and getting arrested, but things could get far more complicated if a government entity (in this case, a public school) was the one guilty of the peeping.

click on start,right click on my computer, go to properties, click device manager tab, scroll down list to imaging device, find camera and highlight, right click on disable, click OK. There now the camera is disabled and without tape.

Every school employee involved should be fired.The IT department should have disabled the cameras as described above.

dragula, I think that is the most likely case. It wouldn't shock me in the slightest if the contents of the drive were routinely sync'd back to some central server, which I have 0 problem with, given that these were school issued machines.

Back in high school, we had laptops that could be rented overnight. The clearly stated policy however was that anything left on the laptop would be wiped, but could also be used for disciplinary purposes. For example, install napster (yes, it was that long ago), and you'd get a detention. Leave pictures on there of acts against the code of behavior, and you'd also get in trouble. This was a private school, though, so they could do things like that, as we all chose to go there and accept the code of behavior.

There is a lot of detail we still don't have about this story. But I suspect the photo of the child was taken remotely while they were logged into the school's servers. Any inappropriate use by the child of the web cam while on the school's servers would make for a bit of a grey area. The school could argue that the child was intentionally making themselves viewable to others on the server. Tho their intended audience may have been a class mate, the admins may have legal authority to monitor any images going thru their server. It wouldn't really matter where the child was doing it from.

like most of you, i grew up with computers, my parents knew that it was important to have us grow up with them...a luxory that most people dont have. even though my parents knew how important computers would be even in the 80's my mom still hardly knows how to email. she is barely over 50...

i have heard congressmen give speeches regarding technology, even while they have no idea what they are talking about (clogging the tubes anybody?)...

it would not surprise me in the least if ignorance of modern technology on the part of the administration is mostly at fault...this does not in the least diminish the consequences of the situation, but i very well could see an uninformed 50-60 year old principal tell a parent that the school has every right to do with the laptops what it wants since they are school provided...without realizing what a nightmare the child porn issue could be...

just my thoughts...still if this is the case...everybody involved should get fired...ignorance isnt an excuse for breaking the law...

The problem with some schools and some principals is they think they have a special little world where no outside laws or rules apply. They truly believe they have the right to do anything and everything to students that they want (striking, forced strip searches, and apparently secret web cam photos). There really isn't much difference between some principals and dictators such as Castro, Gaddafi, and Saddam.

We should be better than that. There may be some problem students in every school, but they need to be dealt with in a civilized and sane manner based on the ethics of the society around them.

Originally posted by Brimstar:I can't help but echo the surreal comment made above. This is insane. Saying heads need to roll is an understatement. If they were remotely turning on the webcams on student laptops then there is a very long list of people who need to be fired including IT staff, school administrators, as well as administrators at the county level.

This.

If the activity by the school is as alleged, I'm absolutely stunned. I can't even fathom professional IT workers not raising big, giant blood red flags over allowing this to be possible -- and if they did, I hope they put their complaints and recommendations in writing and saved copies.

I probably shouldn't be shocked -- schools are taking on the role of nanny just as fast as parents and society can throw the job at them. It's not a new trend; technology just makes it easier. For every story I hear with a set of parents going ballistic over one of these things, I have to wonder how many more go unnoticed?

Originally posted by Brimstar:I can't help but echo the surreal comment made above. This is insane. Saying heads need to roll is an understatement. If they were remotely turning on the webcams on student laptops then there is a very long list of people who need to be fired including IT staff, school administrators, as well as administrators at the county level.

I agree with the general sentiment, but you may be overreaching, especially without the full/real story being known. IT staff? That might be like suing Smith & Wesson after being shot by a criminal who was wielding one of their weapons. Sure, IT staff may have configured the systems and enabled the webcam hardware and software for legitimate uses, but the only way they could be implicated is if they did anything inappropriate, knowingly, on their own or at the request or direction of a superior.

And, county administrators? Why? Because they didn't know that some of their underlings were morons who were about to do really, really stupid things? Might as well just immediately imprison everyone in the country who has ever had even one less than brilliant underling. POOF! Quiet time on the streets of America!

Again, I agree that whatever happened may have been incredibly WRONG, and that the wrongdoers must be punished, but lets not start hanging IT staff just yet : )

If this is true- which it appears to be- the school really fucked up. At the absolute bare minimum, they should have been up-front about it, and required the parents' explicit permission before engaging in any sort of monitoring. But there was no notification whatsoever, which makes this all the more asinine.

For those of you siding with the school as they cannot make a dumb decision. Wake up! Have you seen these idiots in charge of our kids? They teach abstinence as the only effective means of birth control, that's pretty freaking stupid. They force doubt on science by pushing open religion called I.D. as a science, despite having no scientific basis, mega dumb. They have stopped teaching critical thinking in favor of a curriculum based on acing multiple choice tests, that's just retarded.

As a recent graduate of Harriton, I thought I could shed some light on the situation. These laptops were 2.0ghz 2gb Macbooks issued out to all the students for the entire year to do whatever they wanted and this was the 2nd year of the program. The webcam couldn't be disabled due through tough tough security settings. //SNIP//

@lifehertz: That's awesome for the school's IT admins, but if those "tough tough security settings" included making sure that the student accounts where non-administrator (which is entirely reasonable), then it doesn't do the students any good at all, unless they can boot to single-user mode or boot to an external drive w/o a firmware password (both of which should ideally also have been disabled).

As a recent graduate of Harriton, I thought I could shed some light on the situation. These laptops were 2.0ghz 2gb Macbooks issued out to all the students for the entire year to do whatever they wanted and this was the 2nd year of the program. The webcam couldn't be disabled due through tough tough security settings. //SNIP//

Now, I'm no expert on Macs, but I assume its very possible to set up a profile for a student that doesn't let them modify the laptop's configuration. If they're not going to let students install games (which I wouldn't if I were issuing laptops to students), they probably aren't going to let them run kernel commands either.

What is stupid is for an individual to allow their personal biases to blind them so pervasively that they cannot see the truth even if it is right in front of them. Take a look at this article on CNN that details how effective abstinence education has proven itself while you still have time to redeem yourself.

"Study: Abstinence program most effective at delaying sex among youths"

click on start,right click on my computer, go to properties, click device manager tab, scroll down list to imaging device, find camera and highlight, right click on disable, click OK. There now the camera is disabled and without tape.

I'm willing to bet that the school locked down the laptops it gave to students, prevented them from doing anything like this. I don't know anything about Mac security settings, but I imagine they were set up similarly.

What is stupid is for an individual to allow their personal biases to blind them so pervasively that they cannot see the truth even if it is right in front of them. Take a look at this article on CNN that details how effective abstinence education has proven itself while you still have time to redeem yourself.

"Study: Abstinence program most effective at delaying sex among youths"

OFF TOPIC: That fact may be true, but you forgot to include one very important detail of that story. The abstinence program was only that successful once they removed all religious ideas from it. I read that CNN story too.

BACK ON TOPIC:

quote:

Originally posted by Ardax:

quote:

Originally posted by Fritz Gerlich:didn't they know some of the pics could be considered Child Pr0n. WTF were they thinking.

I'd be surprised if there isn't at least one student who mentions seeing that green light on while they were undressed.

Bringing it up as a complaint to the local police or FBI could kick off a child porn investigation almost immediately, and send a few people to FPMITA prison.

If pictures that could be construed as "child porn" were taken does it make it worse than the pictures were taken remotely over the internet?

If the activity by the school is as alleged, I'm absolutely stunned. I can't even fathom professional IT workers not raising big, giant blood red flags over allowing this to be possible -- and if they did, I hope they put their complaints and recommendations in writing and saved copies.

I probably shouldn't be shocked -- schools are taking on the role of nanny just as fast as parents and society can throw the job at them. It's not a new trend; technology just makes it easier. For every story I hear with a set of parents going ballistic over one of these things, I have to wonder how many more go unnoticed?

That's what really gets me, how didn't someone along the line bring up that this is totally insane and illegal? But then, that's the way it works sometime, the big guys at the top are completely detached from reality and the people below just do what they're told, maybe they were told it would be for use in school.

I really hope it's misrepresented, a parent misunderstanding and overreacting to the student taking a photo with the webcam, with the kid claiming he did nothing wrong or something. But it could just be the principle finding out they had complete remote control of the laptop and abusing it without anyone else really knowing about it.

They were stupid enough to punish the kid based on something he did at home though. They could well be stupid enough to have collected that "evidence" themselves.

It's highly unlikely that these kids had admin access to these machines, so all the info on removing drivers and disabling it are useless to them. They simply do not have that kind of control. Simply applying a piece of tape is the easiest solution for them. Anyway, there was a recent documentary on frontline where they showed the IT administrators of a similar school that hands out laptops doing exactly this: using screen sharing and the webcams to make sure that the kids are actually doing school work. See here. The only difference I see here is that it was done at a kid's home. It is not unlikely that the use of the laptops is governed by a some condition of use statement or policy that covers these things and that they are clear legally. The parents and kids might actually have consented to it. I don't know whether that would still apply when the webcam is used in the kid's home. Fodder for lawyers I guess.

click on start,right click on my computer, go to properties, click device manager tab, scroll down list to imaging device, find camera and highlight, right click on disable, click OK. There now the camera is disabled and without tape.

Every school employee involved should be fired.The IT department should have disabled the cameras as described above.

his is similar to a case from 2008 when a Florida woman took her laptop in for repairs and eventually discovered it was rigged up to take webcam photos of her at home without her knowledge. The Peeping Tom in that case ended up confessing to the deed and getting arrested, but things could get far more complicated if a government entity (in this case, a public school) was the one guilty of the peeping.

I don’t see how this is meaningfully similar to that case.

I don't see how you don't think this is meaningfully similar to that case.

On topic: Has anyone revealed what this "improper behavior" they photographed was?